


The Angel Room: Makael Regroups

by CatherineinNB



Series: The Angel Room [21]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Coffee Shops, Episode: s14e12 Prophet and Loss, Feels, Friendship, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Loss, Ma'lak Box (Supernatural), Magic, Metafiction, Regrouping, Season/Series 14, Season/Series 14 Spoilers, The Winchester Gospels (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-15 03:38:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18490546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatherineinNB/pseuds/CatherineinNB
Summary: After weeks of working side-by-side with TFW 2.0 in the Bunker, a misunderstanding (what she would call a failure on her part) has led to Makael's return back to the place where it all started, the place Sam dubbed "The Angel Room."Makael works to process what happened, and figure out what's next.Author's Note: This entry takes place going into "Prophet and Loss."





	The Angel Room: Makael Regroups

**Author's Note:**

> **_The Context:_**  
>  Eight-and-a-half months ago, seraphim Makael, formerly of the Heavenly Choir, fled the _Supernatural_ universe after Michael arrived from Apocalypse World.
> 
> Makael had always been good at keeping to herself. It’s why she survived the intra-angel conflicts after the Great Fall. So when Michael started tracking down angels soon after his arrival, Makael decided that it was time to find a new universe to call home. Using the spell that, years ago, propelled the Winchesters into an alternate universe, Makael was ready to make a new life for herself in ours. A quiet life. A human life, much like the one she had lived after the Fall. 
> 
> Then she discovered  _ Supernatural _ .
> 
> She told herself it was boredom, it was curiosity, it was about immersing herself the very human phenomenon of fandom, that prompted her to start pulling characters into our universe for interviews after each new episode of Season 14 aired. She styled herself a journalist. An interviewer. A fangirl.
> 
> But meeting the Winchesters and their extended family changed her.
> 
> Makael is no longer an angel who stays safely on the sidelines. She’s … changed. Trained, first with Ketch, and then with Castiel. She’s literally fought for the Winchesters. Used her research skills, her talent with magic, and her voice (which used to serenade God in the Throne Room) to help them.
> 
> But now, after weeks of working with them side-by-side in the Bunker, a misunderstanding (what she would call a failure on her part) has led to her return back to the place where it all started, the place Sam dubbed  _ The Angel Room _ .
> 
> It’s time to regroup.  
> 

**_The Story:  
_ ** It’s strange, being back.

Makael puts down her bags and lets her gaze drift around the room.  _ Her  _ room.

Odd that the bedroom in the Bunker, where she’d only lived for a few weeks, feels more like home, like  _ her _ , than this place, where she’d stayed for months. Where she’d meticulously chosen all the furnishings, all the little pieces that accented the space.

To be honest, an angel doesn’t need much more than a room. They don’t eat, don’t need showers, or laundry facilities, or sleep. So the many necessities of human habitation—a place to prepare meals, to freshen up themselves and their garments, to rest—are rendered unnecessary when it comes to angels.

Makael turns back to the open door behind her. Through it, she can still clearly see the Bunker library: the (very sharp) swords on their stands, her favorite comfy red leather chair tucked into a corner, innumerable books with their leather spines gleaming in the golden light from the lamps on the tables. She looks at it all for a long, silent moment, her face oddly blank. Then, with a gesture, she shuts off the lights, plunging the library into shadows. 

She lets out a breath and turns to the open door, where the ruddy orange sigil, set with her blood, smolders. It goes dark with a single word, and then, very gently, she pushes the door shut.

The click as it closes feels … final.

She stays there, her palms resting on the door’s glossy wooden surface. After a moment, she leans her forehead against it, too, and closes her eyes, willing herself to stay calm.

Eventually, she pushes away.

It takes all of fifteen minutes for Makael to unpack: her clothes and Supernatural DVDs go into the closet to the right of the door; her laptop, notes, and odds and ends go on her desk, to be sorted and tucked away later; the only thing that really takes any time at all is placing all the books she’d retrieved back in their proper places on the rows of shelves.

Last of all, she takes the hawk’s feather from her pocket and places it gently back in its spot on the bookcases.

She stares at it, and for a second she has an overwhelming urge to light it on fire.

Destroy her only way back. 

She doesn’t really have anything to go back for anymore, after all.

Instead, she turns away and stalks over to her desk, fingernails biting into her palms to prevent her from performing the gesture that would do just that, and busies herself with putting away the bits and pieces that go into individual drawers.

When everything is organized, she threads her laptop’s charging cord through the discreet hole in the top of the desk, plugs it in, takes a seat in the desk chair, and boots up her laptop.

_ I want you gone. _

Makael flinches involuntarily as Sam’s final words to her, unbidden, flit through her mind.

When she had finally recovered enough to do something other than look at her cell phone in shock, she’d called him back.

It had gone straight through to voicemail. 

She hadn’t called again. Nor did she call any of the others.

She’d packed her bags. 

She looks in confusion at the splashes of wet on her keyboard, then dashes the backs of her hands against her cheeks angrily as she realizes she’s just been crying.

She doesn’t qualify for self-pity, she tells herself. Sam considered her an ally. He’d trusted her, and she’d betrayed that trust. 

Never mind the promise to Dean. She’d been weak to make it. Easily intimidated. 

Not that it was Dean’s fault, either. She should have known better. 

_ Anytime anyone keeps a secret from anyone else on  _ Supernatural _ , it comes out at the worst possible time in the worst possible way. Whether it’s scripted or God or karma—it just  _ does _ , Castiel, and you  _ know _ that.    _

She scoffs as she remembers the words she spoke in this very room to her brother. She would have done well to remember them herself, earlier. 

The rest … all the reasons she’d told herself, all the reasons she’d continued to withhold everything from Sam? None of them matter.

_ We let you into our home, Makael. Into our family. And  _ this _ is what you do? You hide this from me? Keep _ this _ a secret? _

“Fuck,” she mutters. She pushes back abruptly from her desk, stalks to the door, and throws it open. This time, it opens to a nondescript hallway done in shades of beige. The hallway always makes her think of oatmeal when she walks through it. 

A few moments later, the elevator dings, and she steps off into the lobby of her building. She pushes through the front doors, and is immediately caught in a freezing gust of air. There’s snow and ice still on the ground where it hasn’t been cleared from the sidewalk, and the whole street has that post-Christmas, post-New-Year’s dingy grayness about it. Nothing left to celebrate, just months of winter still stretching out before the city and its citizens.

The cold, of course, doesn’t bother Makael one bit, but crossing the street in nothing but a thin t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers earns her more than one glance from passing pedestrians. 

She couldn’t care less at the moment.

She pushes open the door to the coffee shop that sits opposite her building, the dinging bell announcing her presence to the man reading a newspaper behind the counter. Tony is the owner, and he lets his employees keep the place running, but he likes to be there and talk to the customers, and he enjoys personally serving them “a good old-fashioned cup of joe, not that fancy bullshit.” Of course, he always says that with a conspiratorial smile, since his coffee shop also serves all the “fancy bullshit,” from correttos to capuchinos to flat whites. 

“Mak!” The older man’s grey hair is receding, and his belly protrudes well past the waist of his pants, but his eyes are sharp and grey and his smile is warm. “Been ages since you’ve stopped by. Where’ve you been?”

“Hey, Tony,” says Makael, finding her smile to him is less forced than she thought it would be.  But then she tries to come up with an answer for her absence, and the first words that come out of her mouth are, “I was visiting with family,” and if she’d been carrying her angel blade she might have stabbed herself with it then and there because God, she’s stupid, that was the stupidest thing to say on top of every other stupid thing she’s done, and she has to work hard to keep from bursting into tears in the middle of the shop.

“For the holidays?” asks Tony, taking in her expression with those keen grey eyes.

Makael nods, wordlessly.

Tony nods, sagely. “Mm, yeah, that can be rough, kiddo. Well, you’re back now. What’ll you have? Your regular?”

Her regular is a cup of whatever good old-fashioned joe he’s got brewing that day. 

“With cream and sugar, please,” she says, without thinking, and he raises his eyebrows.

“That’s new,” he says.

“I discovered I prefer it that way,” she says. “My … nephew showed me.” 

She swallows hard.

He nods, and doesn’t comment further, pouring the coffee and fixing it with cream and sugar for her (although, she realizes later, she could have done that herself at the little station by the windows). When she gives him cash from her pocket, he takes it, then pats her free hand gently as he drops the change into her palm. “Glad to have you back here, Mak,” he says, warmly.

She gives him a shaky smile. “Thanks, Tony.”

She almost leaves. Tony’s compassion—of which she is completely undeserving—is stirring the very things up she’d been trying to escape: memories, feelings … guilt. But the idea of going back to her room at the moment is worse than staying in the coffee shop, so she finds a comfy fabric armchair in a corner and settles in.

The space is full of the buzz of conversation, the hum and hiss of the espresso machines as the baristas make up orders, and the sharp and overlaying scents of the many different kinds of coffee beans they sell. There's something soothing and familiar about it all.

Soon after she first arrived, Makael began coming here regularly. She never actually drank the coffee. She came to watch the people, to make sure that this universe didn’t have any unexpected curveballs when it came to social customs, human etiquette, or current events that she needed to be aware of. 

Research.

She realizes now that, no matter what she told herself at the time, the real reason she came here was because she was lonely. Intensely and incurably lonely.

She takes a sip of coffee before she realizes what she’s doing, and makes a face as she swallows quickly.  _ Molecules.  _ Damn, she misses the taste of coffee.

… and she could slap herself. 

“Can you please go thirty seconds without thinking about  _ back there _ ?” she mutters. 

Because there’s no going back. Of that much, she’s sure.

That’s all right. Well, the reasons aren’t all right. Her betrayal of Sam isn't all right. Failing Dean sure as hell isn’t all right. But it’s not the first time she’s experienced something like this. She Fell. She’s lived through  _ no going back _ before. She’ll survive.    

“You’ll survive.” She says it out loud, closing her eyes and tipping her head back to rest against the padded fabric of the chair. Maybe saying it out loud enough will make it feel like she isn’t drowning.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It takes several days before she can bring herself to watch  _ Supernatural.  _

She decides to pick up where she left off and goes back to “Nihilism,” rather than starting with “Damaged Goods,” sitting at her desk rather than her usual viewing spot on the couch. That would feel too … intimate. Too informal, now. 

Even as the recap plays, she’s not sure why she’s doing it, or if it’s wrong or creepy to be watching. 

Seeing Sam’s face for the first time since she left feels like a physical punch to the gut. She wasn't expecting that (it isn’t  _ really  _ Sam, after all—it’s his dopplegänger, Jared), but it hurts like a motherfucker.

Even so, she learns a lot from watching “Nihilism.” Whether or not they meant to, all of them had glossed over or omitted parts of what happened.

She stops dead at the exchange between Castiel and Michael about God, pausing the video. It takes her mind a bunch of tries to wrap itself around what Michael’s just said:  _ God—Chuck—is a writer, and like all writers, he churns out draft after draft. My world? This world? Nothing but failed drafts. And when he realizes they’re flawed, he moves on and tries again. _

She feels as sick as Castiel looks when she hits play, and he says, “No, that’s not how … why would he do that?” and she flinches when Michael raises his voice and says with a faint smile, “Because he doesn’t care! About you, me … anything.”

She stops the playback again, looks around her room, chewing on her lip in an attempt to cut through the nausea she’s experiencing. 

The problem is, it makes way too much sense. God  _ has _ completely fucked off with his sister. And before that, no one knew where he was for thousands of years. Sure, she still sometimes prays to him, but she’s never had any evidence he listens. And after watching Dean cry out to him at the beginning of Season 13, when he lost Castiel and his mother, she can’t bring herself to believe that God  _ is  _ listening. He’d have to be the coldest fucker in existence to have heard  _ that _ and ignored Dean. It’s almost better to believe he’s abandoned them completely, moved on to try again—even though it makes her sick to think of it.

_ Failed drafts. _

Fuck.  

It would explain so damn much.

And even more disconcerting? She can hear an echo of her own pain in Michael’s anger. She remembers vividly the feelings of betrayal, of abandonment, of grief, that she experienced after God left, and she realized that he was never coming back.

It takes a while before she can watch the rest of the episode. When she starts the next one, she has to fast-forward through the first part: Dean packing up the duffle, saying goodbye to Sam. It’s too fresh, too raw. 

_ I want you gone. _

Makael swallows hard. 

It’s also just plain weird to see all those moments in the Bunker from the end of “Nihilism” and the beginning of “Damaged Goods” presented as if she’d never been there. She’d literally been in the library when Castiel was having his talk with Jack about not using his powers in the kitchen; seconds after Dean uttered the words, “What am I supposed to do with this?” and Billie answered, “That’s up to you,” Makael had been knocking on Dean’s door. 

Her words to Jules echo back to her from her memory:  _ Well, of course, none of us are minor characters within our own story. But within the context of  _ Supernatural _ , you are.  _ She winces as she remembers the slight, half-apologetic shrug she’d given the hunter.

God, she’d been awful.

“And  _ you _ don’t even merit an onscreen mention,” she murmurs, shaking her head at the irony. 

In a way, it makes sense. All of the work that they’ve done in the interim between the two episodes haven’t produced any results. And she never actually achieved anything in her quest to save Dean. So why the hell would any of her efforts make it into the writers’ room? Not that she wants to make a cameo on the show—she’d actually find that mortifying. And it would be too weird to know there’s an actress running around in this world with her face … besides, she  _ likes _ flying under the radar. 

But it’s still a bitter realization.

_ Useless.  _ That was the word Raphael and many of the others had used to describe her and the other members of the choir after God left heaven. She realizes, bleakly, that even after all she’s done to try to change, to remake herself, to become more than what she’d been, that’s what she still is: useless.

And worse: a traitor. 

_ I want you gone. _

Makael leans her elbows on the desk, rubs her temples. Finally, she forces herself to hit play again.

She watches as Dean builds the box. 

Watches as Donna is bested by Nick, and has to queasily remind herself that whatever’s happened has already happened—she was likely in Death’s Reading Room when it all went down. As much as Makael might want to, she can’t time travel … there’s nothing she can do. She’s never met Donna in person, but she feels like a friend, simply from all the times Makael’s seen her onscreen. Makael shakes her head. She hates the helplessness of simply  _ watching _ , of not being able to do anything to help her.

But she can’t make herself stop watching, either.

So she sees Mary slip out past a softly-snoring Dean to the shed, discovering the Ma’lak box. Feels her whole body flood with relief when she sees Donna wake up, unharmed, in the front seat of her police cruiser. Feels her stomach drop when she watches Mary be taken by Nick. 

She watches the ensuing madness at the storage facility outside of Grand Rapids.

Watches Dean finally tell Sam everything.

Her heart breaks all over again seeing the betrayal and hurt in Sam’s eyes, hearing it in his voice as he speaks to Dean. She hears again his words to her overlaying it all:  _ I’d expect that of my brother, Makael, but not from you. You’re supposed to be a friend, to be an ally.  _ _ We let you into our home … Into our family. And  _ this _ is what you do? You hide this from me? Keep _ this _ a secret? _

She sits silently for a long time after the end theme music plays and the credits roll. She wonders, absently, what draft this universe was—whether it came before or after the one where she was created. She wonders about the role the many writers of  _ Supernatural  _ play in this universe—whether or not God unwittingly inspired them to write a screen version of the Winchester Gospels. 

Another thought flickers through her head. When God was posing as a prophet of the Lord, his “visions” about the Winchesters came to him practically in real time. Here, the stories are written months ahead. But here,  _ they’re still being written.  _

She sits up straighter in her chair.

She knows that really, she’s distracting herself from her pain by focusing on something else. 

But what if it’s important? What if— 

The door to her room slams open with a force that has her sliding open the left-hand drawer and reaching for her angel blade before she realizes it’s Castiel standing in the threshold, the sigil burning on the surface of the door. 

Makael’s stomach drops.

But Castiel doesn’t look angry; he looks confused, and harried.

“Sister,” he says, stepping into the room, “what are you doing here? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

It takes a beat, and then she realizes he doesn’t know.

It’s somehow worse that he doesn’t already know.

“Sam didn’t tell you?” she asks, hesitantly, as he crosses the room toward her.

“Tell me what?” asks Castiel. Then he shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter—we don’t have time. I need your help.” He spots to angel blade still grasped loosely in her left hand, and nods. “Not a bad idea to bring that with you. Come on.” He turns, starts to head toward the door.

Makael shakes her head. “Castiel, I can’t.”

He pauses, turns back to her with a frown on his face. “Why not?” he asks.

She doesn’t want to say it aloud, but she makes herself. “Sam asked me to leave,” she says, quietly.

“What? Why?” The confusion in Castiel’s face deepens. “What happened?”

Makael takes a deep breath, and braces herself. “I knew about the Ma’lak box, Castiel. About Billie’s visit. About everything. And I didn’t tell him. Or you.”

She expects Castiel to be disgusted with her, to chastise her, or simply turn to the door and walk away without another word. Instead, he goes still for a moment. Then he tilts his head, and asks, very gently, “Why didn’t you?”

She swallows, looks away from those clear blue eyes. “I promised Dean I wouldn’t,” she says. “I shouldn’t have. It was stupid, I mean, it’s not his fault, I was just weak, and—”

“Makael.” Castiel removes the angel blade from her limp grasp, placing it on the desk, and gently takes both of her hands in his. His skin is warm against her icy palms as she looks up at him in surprise. “Just tell me what happened.”

She does, keeping it as brief as possible, given both that she doesn’t want to relive her mistake in detail and that Castiel seemed to be in a hurry when he came bursting in. When she’s done, he puts his palms wearily on the desk, leans into them with sagging shoulders. For a moment, she worries all over again about what he’s going to say, or do, but when he finally looks up, there’s no judgement in his eyes or his expression.

“You were trying to do the right thing in an impossible situation, Makael,” he says, heavily. “You went to Dean thinking he might be in trouble because of Death’s presence. And then you made him a promise, because he asked you to. Because you were trying to be his friend. Sam … Sam doesn’t understand what a promise means to an angel like you.” He sighs, rubs a hand wearily over his face. “And Sam is incredibly upset right now. I haven’t heard him like this in a very long time. He lashed out. He  _ can’t _ lash out at Dean, so he lashed out at you.”

Makael shakes her head. “I betrayed his trust, Castiel. I … he’s right to be angry with me.”

“Sam may see it that way, but I don’t,” says Castiel. “And I need your help right now. We’ll figure the rest out later. Will you come with me?”

“I can’t go back to the Bunker. Not after what Sam—”

“We’ll only be in the Bunker for a few minutes. Then we’ll be leaving. I’ll explain the rest on the way. Please, Makael.” Castiel’s blue eyes are imploring, and, despite herself, Makael finds herself nodding in agreement. He flashes her a brief smile, and extends his hand.

She hesitates, then snatches up her angel blade in her left hand, and takes Castiel’s with her right.

Together, they walk back through the door.

**END SCENE.  
**

**Author's Note:**

> So, there aren’t really research-related notes for this entry; more story-related notes.
> 
>   1. I’d kind of dropped the “Context” intro for fear of it being repetitive, but after a lovely note recently from a reader about how helpful it was for someone coming in late to the series about an older entry, I decided it might be helpful for new readers to update the context section and add it back in.
>   2. This entry is intentionally heavy on the allusions to earlier entries in the series. The most recent reference: Sam’s final words to Makael before she leaves, which are repeated several times. I did this because I find that often when I’m in a difficult or emotional situation, the other person’s words come back to me frequently as I try to process what has happened. So I wanted Makael to have the same kind of experience. I also wanted the return to the physical space of _The Angel Room_ to be an opportunity for Makael to reflect back on things that she’s said and done in that space, as a way to show how she’s grown and as a way to have some moments of irony, such as her words to Castiel about keeping secrets on _Supernatural_.
>   3. Additionally, this entry was an opportunity to see a bit more of a glimpse of the life that Makael built for herself in our universe. Tony just sort of sprang to life, fully-formed, and I was very glad to meet him and glad that Makael had someone in her life in our world who had missed her and noticed that she was gone. It also made sense to me that Makael would have ventured out into our world a little bit after her arrival here, to make sure that she had information she needed about society and current events that would enable her to blend into the background.
>   4. I wanted Makael to have an opportunity to watch “Nihilism” and “Damaged Goods” for a couple of reasons: first, I think the exchange between Castiel and Michael is incredibly important, and it sparked some “meta” ideas for me that I want to explore more down the line. Second, I felt it was incredibly important for Makael to see first-hand, rather than just hear over the phone, what a difficult time Sam had hearing the news about the box and the suicide plan from Dean. I wanted her to be able to see his pain rather than simply experience the anger that stemmed from it.
>   5. I fucking love Castiel. He’s such a bridge-maker as a character, and as an angel who has made plenty of mistakes trying to do the right thing over the years, I felt that he would be very sympathetic about Makael’s predicament. It made sense to me that he would be the one to draw her back into their world—at least temporarily. We’ll see what happens next.
> 

> 
> That’s all for now! Hope you enjoyed! 


End file.
